A Feminist's Regrets

This is not the type of article one reads for fun. To be honest, it turned my stomach. Yet I think it is a picture of humanity without Christ; and women who bite hook, line and sinker into feminism can only live so long before realizing that they’re missing something.

In the following article from The Atlantic, writer Lori Gottlieb expressed how she and other so-called feminists long for marriage above all else. Even if they must marry a homosexual man to find someone who "gets" them, or settle for a man they don't love, the security and happiness of marriage must be achieved at all costs. She wrote,

“To the outside world, of course, we still call ourselves feminists and insist—vehemently, even—that we’re independent and self-sufficient and don’t believe in any of that damsel-in-distress stuff, but in reality, we aren’t fish who can do without a bicycle, we’re women who want a traditional family. And despite growing up in an era when the centuries-old mantra to get married young was finally (and, it seemed, refreshingly) replaced by encouragement to postpone that milestone in pursuit of high ideals (education! career! but also true love!), every woman I know—no matter how successful and ambitious, how financially and emotionally secure—feels panic, occasionally coupled with desperation, if she hits 30 and finds herself unmarried.

Later, she wrote:

A female friend who broke up with a guy because he “didn’t like to read” and who is now, too, a single mom (with, ironically, no time to read herself) similarly felt no regrets—at first. At the time, she couldn’t imagine settling, but here’s the Catch-22: “If I’d settled at 39,” she said, “I always would have had the fantasy that something better exists out there. Now I know better.’….

A number of my single women friends admit (in hushed voices and after I swear I won’t use their real names here) that they’d readily settle now but wouldn’t have 10 years ago….we grew up thinking that marriage meant feeling some kind of divine spark, and so we walked away from uninspiring relationships that might have made us happy in the context of a family.”

In a twist, the same women who gave up femininity for independence are disillusioned with it all. Independence isn’t so swanky when it means growing old with no family. As a bitter irony, some feminists have evolved into the same women most mocked by feminism: the “Single and Looking” lonely-heart types.

At first I could only feel sorry for the authoress. The tragedy is not that these women need men. It’s a fact—we all do. It's true that not every woman is meant to marry, but women and men were still created to complement each other. We need men, and men need us. Trying to live without them is fighting a losing battle.

The story of disgruntled feminists only worsens when the women switch extremes, finally believing that a man—any man—will fulfill their hearts’ needs. They search and find a susceptible male, to find he falls short; men are unable to supply what they need most. But after considering the woman’s story further, I realized that this is still not the real tragedy.

The tragedy is when God, the only Person able to satisfy these women, is overlooked. These feminists have jumped from looking to themselves to looking to others, but they still haven't cast a glance towards God for the satisfaction their hearts long for. The One who designed their DNA was never asked, “Why were we made this way?” These women never found the joy of glorifying Him; and as a result, God is not glorified to the max. He is shunned. That's the ultimate tragedy.